Having spent half a day or so with him in the mid-'80s, I'm not at all surprised by this.

CSB: I was peripherally involved with the guys running the DWFCA, and among other things I got to do (e.g., putting mailing labels on newsletters while watching "Kentucky Fried Movie" and eating pizza) was that I got to meet a few guest stars at conventions. I was not "inner circle" at all, but I met Pertwee and Sladen at one convention in Denver when instead of standing in line for an autograph (a three-story line down the stairs to the balcony at the Paramount Theatre), I used my recognition by the handlers to instead pull up a chair and sit with them for a spell while they were signing. Pertwee thought it was funny that I had the balls to just sit down next to them and chat, and decided he really liked me when it became clear I didn't want an autograph.

The next morning, I was there early, waiting in line to get in, when their car pulled up about an hour before the door opened. And by the way, Pertwee always did conventions in full costume. He said, "Nobody's here to meet me. They've come to see The Doctor."

So they get out of their car, and they're not going in yet, they're going across the street to a diner for breakfast. Pertwee and Sladen spot me in line (there were only about 9 people at this point), and gesture for me to come with them. (I really enjoyed turning around and shrugging at the other 8 people in line.)

Now, this is a Sunday morning, and that's when "Doctor Who" aired on the local PBS station - whole stories (4-6 episodes) each Sunday morning. So we walk into this diner, and there's a farking Pertwee episode playing on the TV in the diner, and there's Jon Pertwee in full costume standing in the door way. About half the people in the diner and doing double-takes (the other half just think he's a weirdo in a '70s tuxedo and cape), and the guy running the diner is just slack-jawed. Pertwee says, in a perfect aggravated-third-Doctor pitch, "What on earth are you gaping at, man? Kindly seat us for breakfast!" Then he just turns to me and gives me this huge shiat-eating grin. Elisabeth Sladen just about choked from trying to not laugh.

She was fantastic, by the way. Kind and funny and friendly as all get-out. Gave me a hug at the end of that day. Pertwee was not entirely unlike his character, usually a few steps ahead of the conversation, not one to suffer fools, endearingly irritable (well, endearingly if you were on his good side - I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of his irritability), and hilarious. He had the crowd roaring when he was on stage, although I can't for the life of me remember one thing he said.

100 Watt Walrus:Having spent half a day or so with him in the mid-'80s, I'm not at all surprised by this.

never had the honor of meeting Pertwee, but I did get to meet Lis Sladen in 2008 at the Chicago con. Very classy lady. When I had my turn at the picture queue, she complimented me on my attire (black velvet jacket & white frilly shirt), and asked if I was entering the "masquerade". I joked that this was my everyday attire, and she went "oh, you Americans." adorable!

Is it just me, or does the young Jon Pertwee in the picture FTFA kinda look like Arthur Darvill? (Which is, of course, the other way around.) And also the First and Second Doctor's companion Ben Jackson.

Darth_Lukecash:Amy: Okay, Doctor. Explain what is happening, please.The Doctor: Mels. Short for.Mels: Melody.Amy: Yeah, I named my daughter after her.The Doctor: You named your daughter after your daughter.

This my friends, is why Doctor Who is the greatest show ever.

Poor execution of an ill-conceived turn in a plot that should have been mapped out better from the start?

Fans who REALLY, REALLY, like the poor execution of an ill-conceived turn in a plot that should have been mapped out better from the start?

Perhaps?\much as I like my Who, that sudden appearance of the bff Mels was awkwardly shoehorned into a much longer story arc.

Never mentioned before. Not at the wedding (oh, yeah, yeah, she doesn't "like" weddings, whatever). And worse yet, a selfish, impulsive, irresponsible, loose cannon of character that the younger Amy and Rory (who I doubt were friends from childhood) would not have befriended in the first place as neither of them have a history as troublemakers.

Also, how did Mels get from 1969 NYC to 1990s Leadworth while still a child? She says directly in the dialog during her regeneration that "Last time I did this, I ended up a toddler in the middle of New York," so unless she regenerated in NYC twice, they've got some explaining to do.

And don't get me started (again) on the whole "Oh well, our baby's been kidnapped, let's go have adventures!" thing.

/Sorry, there's a lot about that painfully sloppy storyline which really pisses me off, since the show and River Song are both so fantastic most of the time.

100 Watt Walrus:Mels was the only one who asked while pointing a gun at the Doctor, so she's the only one who got to try.Everyone else would have asked off-screen, and the Doctor would have sat them down in front of a computer terminal, and sent them here.

No, he'd just explain that it's one of those timey wimey fixed events where it doesn't change anything. WWII and the Holocaust still happen. It's not that killing Hitler is bad, it's that killing Hitler doesn't work.

I wouldn't be surprised if Hitler were a fixed point in time. If you kill him, and no one takes his place for any reason (unlikely), you've changed the futures of millions of people who in turn change the futures of exponentially more people. Killing Hitler would really change the entire world and the entire course of humanity. Even the Doctor would get his ass kicked for changing history that much. Remember what happened when some meaningless lowlife wasn't killed by a car? Much less the one astronaut lady.

That's the biggest issue. Now, I understand that it's just part of the reality of making TV- actually doing it properly would have been very hard. But that raises an important question: did it need to be done at all? Did it really add anything? Not terribly- it was just a way to get the plot moving.

It would actually have been better if Mels was a stranger who quickly insinuated herself into Amy and Rory's life for the explicit purpose of getting to the Doctor. Someone who was the perfect friend, since the Silence and their agents had already loaded her brain with everything to know about Amy, Rory and the Doctor. Of course, that wouldn't segue terribly well into the "let's kill Hitler!" subplot, but you could still work it- Mels is trying to expand on her "programming", trying to kill as many of history's monsters as she can before she has to get to the big one- the Doctor.

100 Walt Walrus:Having spent half a day or so with him in the mid-'80s, I'm not at all surprised by this.

CSB: I was peripherally involved with the guys running the DWFCA, and among other things I got to do (e.g., putting mailing labels on newsletters while watching "Kentucky Fried Movie" and eating pizza) was that I got to meet a few guest stars at conventions. I was not "inner circle" at all, but I met Pertwee and Sladen at one convention in Denver when instead of standing in line for an autograph (a three-story line down the stairs to the balcony at the Paramount Theatre), I used my recognition by the handlers to instead pull up a chair and sit with them for a spell while they were signing. Pertwee thought it was funny that I had the balls to just sit down next to them and chat, and decided he really liked me when it became clear I didn't want an autograph.

The next morning, I was there early, waiting in line to get in, when their car pulled up about an hour before the door opened. And by the way, Pertwee always did conventions in full costume. He said, "Nobody's here to meet me. They've come to see The Doctor."

So they get out of their car, and they're not going in yet, they're going across the street to a diner for breakfast. Pertwee and Sladen spot me in line (there were only about 9 people at this point), and gesture for me to come with them. (I really enjoyed turning around and shrugging at the other 8 people in line.)

Now, this is a Sunday morning, and that's when "Doctor Who" aired on the local PBS station - whole stories (4-6 episodes) each Sunday morning. So we walk into this diner, and there's a farking Pertwee episode playing on the TV in the diner, and there's Jon Pertwee in full costume standing in the door way. About half the people in the diner and doing double-takes (the other half just think he's a weirdo in a '70s tuxedo and cape), and the guy running the diner is just slack-jawed. Pertwee says, in a perfect aggravated-third-Doctor pitch, "What on earth are you gaping at, man? Kindly seat us for breakfast!" Then he just turns to me and gives me this huge shiat-eating grin. Elisabeth Sladen just about choked from trying to not laugh.

She was fantastic, by the way. Kind and funny and friendly as all get-out. Gave me a hug at the end of that day. Pertwee was not entirely unlike his character, usually a few steps ahead of the conversation, not one to suffer fools, endearingly irritable (well, endearingly if you were on his good side - I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of his irritability), and hilarious. He had the crowd roaring when he was on stage, although I can't for the life of me remember one thing he said.

/CSB

I have read cooler stories on Fark, but damn if I can remember any of them right now.

100 Watt Walrus:"What on earth are you gaping at, man? Kindly seat us for breakfast!" Then he just turns to me and gives me this huge shiat-eating grin. Elisabeth Sladen just about choked from trying to not laugh.

No Such Agency:100 Watt Walrus:"What on earth are you gaping at, man? Kindly seat us for breakfast!" Then he just turns to me and gives me this huge shiat-eating grin. Elisabeth Sladen just about choked from trying to not laugh.

Kinda... hating you right now.

Would it make you feel any better to know that Peter Davison was kind of a dick to me at another convention a year later?

/To be fair, he was not feeling well at all, and understandably grumpy.

100 Watt Walrus:Also, how did Mels get from 1969 NYC to 1990s Leadworth while still a child? She says directly in the dialog during her regeneration that "Last time I did this, I ended up a toddler in the middle of New York," so unless she regenerated in NYC twice, they've got some explaining to do.

Moffat has consistently demonstrated that his apparent continuity problems are planned for the long run. Note the Doctor's bowtie's colour change in the <i>Byzantium</i>'s greenhouse that everyone complained about until several episodes later when he goes back through his adventures with Amy and we learned that that there were two Elevens in that scene. Many of us were really pissed off that Nicholas Courtney did not even get an "in memoriam" dedication alongside Lis Sladen in "The Impossible Astronaut" nor retrospective pages on the official website -- because Moffat wanted the telephone call several months later to have maximum emotional impact.

My guess is that River picked up her toddler self when she dropped off the Melody Malone manuscript to her/their mother (or made paid her parents multiple visits), and brought her forward in time to circa 1990-91. Or, along the same lines, toddler Mels stumbled to the subway and somehow found her parents' or older brother's house to be reared by them a là <i>Diff'rent Strokes</i> or <i>Webster</i> for a few years, and then was picked up by her older white self and taken forward in time to circa 1996-7. The Blinovich Limitation effect presumably would not have prevented her two selves from touching, both because she's effectively a Time Lord and the Doctor has often physically contacted his other selves, and her mother is also oddly immune from the effect, as shown in "The Big Bang", "Space & Time" and implied in "Good Night".

Remember also that newly regenerated River made an off-hand remark about maybe de-aging herself to mess with people, although that may have just been included in order to brush Alex Kingston's out-of-sequence aging between seasons under the rug.

To be fair, Moffatt has some continuity plot holes, such as Anthony Williams' apparent absence from his son's wedding (never met the Doctor nor seen the TARDIS until they were on the Silurian Ark), but Mels' regeneration issue seems to have been intentionally written.